Georeferencing processing time and efficiency (Python script)

Question

Hi everybody,

When I georeference a tif or jpg image on ArcMaps by loading the link table with a dozen control points, the transformation takes a second or two.

However, when I run the Python script using WarpFromFile, it takes around 10 minutes. Here is my code:

arcpy.WarpFromFile_management(input.jpg, output.tif, link_table.txt, POLYORDER1, NEAREST)

Is there any reason for that? e.g. I input a jpg and the output is a tif, perhaps this slows down the process.

Any idea on how to improve the efficiency?

Thanks

XanderBakker · Accepted Answer

Georeferencing will only apply the control points to the raster and change the visualization. Updating the georeference will only change the worldfile and not the actual raster.

When you warp a raster a new output raster is created. Depending the type of resampling method the time can increase even more.